Monday 29th July 2019 A much needed new service began carrying passengers over Hammersmith Bridge from this morning. With the Bridge closed to all motor traffic including buses since 10th April this new service is provided by a lovely man called Frederick peddling a smart electric Pedi-Cab. And very efficient it is too. I only... Continue Reading →
Friday 26th July 2019 I incorporated Wednesday's ride on Buckland Buses' splendid 1929 Dennis on route 250 between Aldeburgh and Thropeness into an enjoyable couple of days saunter around the lovely countryside in south Suffolk. On Tuesday morning I caught the stopping train to Ipswich out of Liverpool Street at 11:04 as far as Marks... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 24th July 2019 There are lots of wonderful heritage railways all over the country attracting thousands of visitors enjoying a nostalgic train ride. Most are run by volunteers with maybe just a few paid staff and are hugely successful. Who doesn't enjoy a ride-back-in-time rekindling memories of how things used to be? Although running... Continue Reading →
Monday 22nd July 2019 You have to hand it to Stagecoach. Whenever they give a new commercial service a go, they don't hold back. Their South West Falcon introduced in 2016 linking Bristol with Plymouth was a massive investment involving a fleet of brand new coaches running hourly during the day as well as night... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 17th July 2019 It's been a bucket list ambition for a few years. Travel to mainland Britain's most north westerly point at Cape Wrath and visit by far the remotest bus terminus alongside its famous lighthouse. You can't get more remote than the end of an isolated eleven mile single track road which has... Continue Reading →
Friday 12th July 2019 Kent County Council's fourth 'Rural Transport Initiative' gets underway on Monday next week so earlier today I took a ride on the last weekday operation of the old order to get a sense of what this one's all about. (My write up of the first three pilot schemes can be read... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 9th July 2019 Welcome to a fourth day of travelling to tick off various 'to do' routes, destinations, new buses and trains which began with an early start from Llandrindod Wells on the first 06:18 journey which starts its journey at this lovely station and continues beyond Shrewsbury as a stopping train through to... Continue Reading →
Sunday 7th July 2019 Here's a great way to spend five hours on a summer Sunday: enjoy one of the best circular journeys in Devon, if not the whole of Britain. It takes in three top rail lines and a brilliant bus route skirting a National Park. The circular route can be based on either... Continue Reading →
Saturday 6th July 2019 I thought it was high time I ticked off more bus routes on my lengthy 'to do' list compiled from the many suggestions kindly passed on from various sources, not least Twitter, which qualify for the accolade of being the Best of British Bus Routes. So for the next few days... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Bus and coach routes serving airports have expanded greatly over the last few decades with a seemingly constant stream of new initiatives. I wrote about the recent upgrade to First Glasgow's route 500 between Glasgow Airport and the city centre last month while over at Edinburgh Airport, Xplore Dundee have started... Continue Reading →
Saturday 29th June 2019 Back in April I took a ride on the bus route formerly known as the 'Wiltshire Wigglybus' between Pewsey and Devizes - a traditional rural bus route combined with a Dial-a-Ride flexible option and wrote about it here. Yesterday I thought it might be interesting to sample a similar type of... Continue Reading →
This is the story of how a journey on the Longest Day of the year from Lands End to John O'Groats by ground public transport (that's bus and train) unfolded in real time. The original plan, as described in Wednesday's (19th June) blog was to complete the end-to-end journey in just under 24 hours. Except,... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 19th June 2019 To celebrate a year of blogging and the upcoming Longest Day of the year I'm heading down to Cornwall on GWR's Night Riviera sleeper train tonight to begin an epic 24-hour Lands End to John O'Groats trip by bus and train beginning tomorrow, Thursday, afternoon. On most weekdays, this famous journey... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 18th June 2019 Kent County Council's 'Rural Transport Initiative' using 'Taxi Buses' has begun so I thought I'd take a look to see how it's going. It's early days but there are already signs of interest building in the rural communities now enjoying public transport either for the first time or after quite a... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 11th June 2019 Yesterday was the final time routes 293 and 294 connected various Kent villages with Tenterden. The routes' withdrawal are a consequence of Kent County Council's slimmed down funding cut to uncommercial bus services following its 'Big Conversation' consultation about rural transport last year. I'd been alerted to the withdrawals on social... Continue Reading →
Sunday 9th June 2019 The Epping Ongar Railway is having one of its popular steam weekends this weekend and I took a ride to the end of the Central Line to have a look. Thanks to Roger Wright's ownership interests, you can always count on decent bus connections from right outside Epping Station to North... Continue Reading →
Friday 7th June 2019It's been a long time waiting but finally First Bus have allocated much needed double deck buses on their high profile Glasgow Airport Express route 500. Ten smart new buses began operating the 24/7 shuttle link between the airport and city centre from the middle of April so I was pleased to... Continue Reading →
Thursday 6th June 2019 It may not rank as high as the West Highland Line, the Kyle of Lochalsh Line or the Far North Line in the great Scottish Scenic Rail Lines stakes but ScotRail have rightly designated the line down to Stranraer as a Scenic Rail Journey and very justifiably so too. While I... Continue Reading →
Friday 31st May 2019 There's been a welcome resurgence in the traditional open top bus market (as opposed to high profile City Sightseeing) over the last few years with long withdrawn routes returning to their once regular haunts. Yellow Buses resurrected their seafront service in Bournemouth and Boscombe a couple of years ago, as did... Continue Reading →
While I was giving GoSutton a try between the Royal Marsden and St Helier Hospitals in Sutton on Tuesday my friend James tweeted suggesting I also give the H1 inter-hospital bus route a ride. That was a new one on me, so I couldn't resist giving it a go. The H1 is sponsored by the... Continue Reading →
Bank Holiday Monday 27th May 2019 The ever professional conductor James gets ready to take up his duty Southern Transit run a once a week bus route between Horsham and Shoreham-by-Sea following as closely as possible the Adur Valley railway line between those towns which closed in 1966 and the more recently established Downs Link... Continue Reading →
Friday 24th May 2019 There was a time if you fancied running a coach travel business you'd get yourself a coach or two (probably decent second-hand stock to begin with), pick up a school contract to run, get known among well-to-do local clubs and societies for those lucrative private hires and maybe run a small... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 22nd May 2019 I left you yesterday morning in Sheffield about to head west on the delightful Hope Valley line (No 12 in My 100 Best Train Journeys) with Trans Pennine Express. It's a beautiful scenic ride through the Peak District made all the better by a gorgeous sunny day. I changed trains in... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 15th May 2019 'Winding your way down on Baker Street' the late great Gerry Rafferty sang; and since February, if he'd still been with us, he would be able to wind his way back up it once again. The road (and nearby parallel running Gloucester Place) has changed back to two-way traffic including an... Continue Reading →
Friday 3rd May 2019 Finding myself in Glasgow at 7.30am yesterday morning (after my inaugural Caledonian Sleeper Mark 5 journey) I thought it would be an opportunity to continue the first-time experiences by taking a ride on the recently completed electrified ScotRail line to Edinburgh via Shotts and then catch a Borders Buses X62 down... Continue Reading →
Monday 29th April 2019 Today's been a fascinating day visiting three tiny islands off England's north west coast alongside Barrow in Furness. Until a few months ago when planning this adventure I had no idea they even existed! The Borough of Barrow, including neighbouring Dalton, has a population of around 57,000 and is Cumbria's second... Continue Reading →
Sunday 21st April 2019Let's get the vinyl-over-windows frustration out of the way first. It's never a good idea to ask the public to vote on branding; it's bad enough letting them decide on EU membership or naming a research vessel for the British Antarctic Survey so when CT Plus Jersey (an HCT Group company) celebrated... Continue Reading →
Friday 19th April 2019 It's not often a completely new bus route starts up. Usually changes to bus services see variations to long standing routes featuring improvements or reductions to frequencies and journey times or diversions to routes to serve new developments. The last new route launch I can recall was Stagecoach's brave investment decision... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 17th April 2019 One of London's best bus routes started up again today for the summer season. Route RP1 runs on Wednesdays from 17th April until the end of October. It runs outside the TfL regime and is completely free to ride thanks to the generous sponsorship of two anonymous (and wealthy) local residents... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 9th April 2019 Transport for London's bus service 969 is the last route standing of a once substantial 'Mobility Bus' network of routes operating one or two days a week to a local shopping centre from relatively low-density neighbourhoods where no alternative mainstream route in the main bus network served the area. In the... Continue Reading →
Friday 5th April 2019 It's that time of year when local authorities begin a fresh financial twelve months which with dindling Government funding often means less money to spend than the year just ended. For subsidised bus routes that can only mean one thing ... another round of cuts and withdrawals. I've been out over... Continue Reading →
Monday 1st April 2019 I'd seen the build up in the trade press last summer. Another 'on-demand' 'ride-sharing' 'app-based' 'innovative' minibus service due to start running between central/north London and Luton airport from October 2018. The operation called 'Blue Bus' would "drop you off as near to your home as we can". Obviously there would... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 19th March 2019 Lothian Buses have just started operating their brand new 100 seat tri-axle buses in service on city routes 11 and 16. I thought I'd take a ride. They're Alexander Dennis Enviro400XLB bodies on a Volvo chassis (according to the swanky promotional video which plays out every five minutes or so on... Continue Reading →
Thursday 14th March 2019 It began a month ago. A day out to Norwich to travel route 88 via Bungay and Halesworth to Southwold, where I'd catch the four-journey-a-day tendered route 90 which returns to Halesworth via a very circuitous route through some delightful Suffolk villages as well as the small town of Beccles. Both... Continue Reading →
Sunday 10th March 2019 It's always a pleasure to visit the Garden of England. My journeys on two days last week included visits to both ends of Kent - to Dover and Deal on the Channel coast in the south east and to Sevenoaks close to the County’s western border with Greater London. Both Stagecoach South... Continue Reading →
Day 5 Sunday 3rd March 2019 Glasgow to Carlisle I always look forward to a journey down the West Coast Main Line between Glasgow and Carlisle, or for a bit of variety, ScotRail's alternative via Kilmarnock and Dumfries, but today I thought I'd try out the bus option. It takes much longer than the... Continue Reading →
Day 3 Friday 1st March 2019 Mull of Kintyre When planning trips it's not often I'll schedule a long journey out and back by exactly the same route and mode of travel in one day. It's always much more interesting to devise a circuit taking in different routes and scenery, villages, towns or cities along... Continue Reading →
Thursday 21st February 2019 It's reminded me of London 2012. Aside from the brilliant athletes and the behind-the-scenes organisational excellence it was the deployment of Games Makers which made for such a positive and enjoyable visitor experience despite mega crowds and challenging transport logistics before and after events. When the wash up review of this... Continue Reading →
Monday 11th February 2019 I'm a great fan of the TrawsCymru high profile long distance bus routes crisscrossing the Welsh nation. They compliment the rail network and provide some great connections between distant communities at impressive frequencies. I've travelled multiple times on all the routes numbered T1 to T6, and always enjoy the truly amazing... Continue Reading →
Sunday 10th February 2019 January 2018 saw Rossendale Borough Council become the latest in the dwindling band of local authority municipal owners to sell off its bus company. Transdev Blazefield were the successful buyers and twelve months on seemed a good time to have a look around the network and see what's been happening. Quite... Continue Reading →
BusAndTrainUser 